Ford Pulls Even With Corker in Tennessee Senate Contest

CQPolitics.com’s list of tossup Senate races continues to grow: The rating on the Tennessee contest for the seat of two-term Republican incumbent Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, has been moved to No Clear Favorite from Leans Republican.

Five-term Democratic Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr.’s personal charisma and career-long effort to cast himself as a political centrist have made him a strong contender throughout his bid to succeed Frist, but he has faced some serious obstacles.

Ford is vying to become the first African-American senator popularly elected in the South, in a state that has trended Republican. And voters in the Aug. 3 GOP primary nominated an establishment figure, former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, who Republican officials were confident would have broad appeal while satisfying the party’s conservative base.

But candidates’ campaigns matter. And the consensus among state and national politics watchers is that Ford, since the primary, has run a much more effective campaign than Corker, who has faced some dissent among staunch GOP conservatives and repeated allegations launched by Ford and other Democrats about his actions as mayor and his personal financial dealings.

Several recent independent polls now show the two party nominees trading front-runner status, alternating razor-thin and inconclusive leads.

A SurveyUSA poll conducted Sept. 9-11 for NBC television affiliate WBIR in Knoxville found that of 638 likely voters, respondents preferred Ford over Corker 48 to 45 percent with a 4 percent margin of error. The close outcome in this and other independent polls contradicted “own” polls done for the candidates’ campaigns: surveys done for Ford show him with a wide lead, while Corker’s campaign said polls show the Republican well ahead.

In part, the Ford surge is an after-effect of the primary campaign. Ford benefited from the absence of serious Democratic competition and was not put on the defensive by members of his own party. Corker, however, was challenged in the Republican primary by two well-known former House members, Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary, both of whom seriously questioned Corker’s conservative credentials as they aimed their appeals to social conservatives who make up much of the Republican base.

One of the biggest reverberations from the primary is the resentment over campaign advertising run by Corker, a real estate developer whose deep pockets gave him a huge financial advantage over his opponents. Hilleary and Bryant argued that Corker’s ads were misleading and untruthful.

Bruce Oppenheimer, a political scientist and longtime elections watcher at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, told CQPolitics.com on Tuesday that the “lingering effect” of the Republican primary was that it provided Democrats “a basis for questioning the credibility of Corker’s negative ads” during the general election campaign.

Ford directly draws the parallel himself in his latest television ad, which also has drawn major attention for highlighting the Democratic candidate’s efforts to appeal to the state’s many religious voters. “Mr. Corker’s doing wrong,” Ford says from a church pew after explaining the central role of religion in teaching him right and wrong. “First spending millions telling untruths about his Republican opponents, both of them good men, and now me.”

Oppenheimer said the primary also damaged Corker by slowing his pace. While the Republican nominee maintained a low profile in the weeks following the primary — not really emerging until a campaign and fundraising trip to the state by President Bush on Aug. 30 — Ford maintained steady visibility through advertising.

“It was like the Corker campaign almost dropped out of sight for three weeks until the president’s visit at the end of August,” said Oppenheimer. “And I don’t think they’ve ever regained anything after that.”

Senior Ford campaign adviser Michael Powell said Tuesday that the past month marked a pivotal period in the race. “There’s been a steady trend line from Labor Day to the present,” Powell told CQPolitics.com. “Congressman Ford is going up in the polls and Mr. Corker is going down in the polls, and I think it’s directly related to the kind of campaign both candidates are running.”

Powell contends that Ford has been discussing the future and change in Tennessee, while Corker has offered negative and distorted messages.

Corker campaign manager Ben Mitchell hit back Tuesday, stating that the Democrats are the ones running misleading ads, hiding what Republicans claim is Ford’s liberal voting record and making him appear tougher than he is on national security and immigration. “Congressman Ford and his friends in Washington are perpetuating the worst kind of political deception on the voters of Tennessee,” Mitchell said in a statement.

Mitchell’s comments were in response to an ad the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) released Tuesday that accuses Corker of actually being weak on one of his signature issues, immigration.

Corker recently aired an ad on the subject. “Today we’ve lost control of our borders,” Corker said in the television commercial. He said immigration problems could be remedied by securing the border, not allowing amnesty and having immigrants learn English.

But the DSCC had sought to discredit Corker on this issue. “Bob Corker may talk tough about illegal immigration, but the millionaire construction magnate doesn’t tell you about the illegal construction workers arrested on one of his work sites,” states a voice in the ad.

Nonetheless, the balance in this up-for-grabs race likely will be decided by whether Ford can win enough voters with his self-portrayal as a Democratic moderate — or if Corker’s conservative message has more appeal in a state that just two years ago gave 57 percent of its presidential votes to Bush.

“One of the things [Corker] hasn’t demonstrated yet is that he has the candidate skills that Ford has,” said Oppenheimer. But Oppenheimer added that charisma isn’t everything. “Is that enough to offset a 10-point Republican lean in the state?” he asked.